…and not because I’ve nothing to write about. I’ve too much! Attended the Scottish Learning Festival (day 1) today, for the fourth year, but the first on the other side of the fence. It was particularly strange wandering about the Glow pods last night while the SECC guys were still laying carpet around me. As an attendee you don’t really think a lot about the preparation that happens before these big events, and it’s impressive.
I spent most of the morning demonstrating Glow to an endless stream of interested parties. I had a brilliant time. I’m not sure what I was expecting. Actually, I am. I expected to be standing about awkwardly for several hours on end with nothing to do. Reality=naw! There were queues, I tells ya, actual queues! The time passed at warp speed, and then I had to deliver a seminar.
Now, I wasn’t supposed to be doing it, but my colleague Tina was asked to help with a spotlight session that was happening at the same time, so I *ahem* volunteered. I’ve spent a week working on it, and it seemed to be pretty well received. It was well attended, and I didn’t panic and say “fwibble” or type “I am a fish” 77 times on a PowerPoint slide, so I’ll write it off as a success.
Afterwards, I attended an informal chat with the writers of the Curriculum for Excellence outcomes for Religious Education (Roman Catholic), as I’m their contact in the Glow team to support them with their National Glow Group – lovely people with great ideas, and it’s an interesting area to work on. I’m not religious but it’s an area of academic interest for me at least, and I think I’ll learn a lot working with the group.
I the, somehow, managed to blag my way into TeachMeet. My name wasn’t on the list because I’m a numpty. I thought I was going to the awards ceremony at my school tonight, but it turns out it’s tomorrow. I managed to sneak in and hide at the back, until I was rescued by John Daly, who recognised me from the back of the room despite it having been actual years since he’d seen me last. Thanks John!
TeachMeet was excellent. I hadn’t a clue what to expect in advance, but it turned out that I was exposed to so many fabulous ideas and examples of practice that my note-taking skills on the iPhone were nearly insufficient. Everyone was interesting, but a few highlights were:
* The delightfully understated John Davitt, extolling the benefits of living in both a paper and electronic world, and his delightful and infinitely useful learning events generator.
* Stuart Meldrum with the Hawick High School Global Classroom project.
* Neil Winton’s introduction to Johnny Bunko (even if it was a front to get people to add farewell messages to Ewan McIntosh to a presentation made up of pics of Ewan) and extra kudos for introducing me to “Where the Hell is Matt?” (you must stick with it until you see him at the DMZ).
*And special mention to the boss, for introducing the Glow Games viral game, which you may find below – have fun testing your mental acuity.
Play the Games!
edit: the code wasn’t coming through properly and I didn’t like the music starting up automatically, so I’m just linking to the games instead of embedding them.
Man, there’s probably way more than that. It’s been a great day. And tomorrow will be even better – no seminar to give 
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